Like a Bird of Fire
by Stamper Comma Leland
Summary: Mary knelt down, her nightgown long and flowing and tangible. Dean reached forward with numb fingers and gripped the hem of it, said, "M-Mom? Mama?" in a voice that didn't sound like his own. - Alternate Ending to Season One's "Home."
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: **Found the beginning of this on my computer and decided to finish it. I miss old school Supernatural. Haven't watched it in forever, but I always liked the idea of Mary coming back to her boys and their father. I might continue this in some form, but I'm not sure yet.

**Like a Bird of Fire**

* * *

She came in flames. Dean would've taken her out, but his baby brother said wait. Stop. I know who it is.

So Dean stopped, and when the flames went out, he knew who it was, too.

His mother looked at him with sad eyes and said his name in a soft voice. It was her apology to him, he told himself seconds later when she went to Sam, who writhed around with his back to the wall of their childhood home, held rigid by ghost ropes.

She said, "Sam. I'm sorry."

Dean felt pangs of many things, none of them good, and then she turned her back to them, her white nightgown flowing around her frame, her long hair swinging over her shoulders. Just the way he remembered her.

She said, "Now let my son go." And the room exploded in bright light and so did Dean's eyes. Blind. He saw nothing, but heard Sam fall to the ground with a loud thud and a groan of discontent.

"Sammy," he croaked, dazed behind fluttering eyelashes, trying to blink the stars away.

"Dean."

And Dean felt around until he found his brother, until they were shoulder to shoulder and slumped against that wall, their insides full of crying little boys who missed their mommy.

Footsteps.

Sam took in a breath. Dean tensed as the light finally began to fade from his vision.

"Missouri?" he asked, knowing the answer.

"N-no," Sam said, like that little boy was trying to crawl out of his throat.

It was a second later that he could see, and he understood the feeling, except that tiny little creature that Dean used to be, so soft and sweet and sticky with the kisses of living parents, didn't limit himself to the throat. He came out of the eyes, too, all wet and free like a river without a dam. And the ears, all a roar.

Mary knelt down, her nightgown long and flowing and tangible. Dean reached forward with numb fingers and gripped the hem of it, said, "M-Mom? Mama?" in a voice that didn't sound like his own.

She put one warm hand on his cheek, and the other on Sam's.

She said, "I'm here."


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N:** Decided to continue this.

* * *

When he sees her for the second first time, she's holding their sons' hands. They might as well be four and six months again, but they're not. John raised two tall boys, both quick with a loaded shotgun, both fiercely protective of what they have and what they lost.

But here they are, eyes red-rimmed, Sam sniffling and Dean trying not to wipe at his nose with his hand because Mary instilled manners in the boy for four years before she was burned away from him. Here they are.

And here she is, blonde hair cascading down narrow, but strong shoulders, her nightgown torn and outdated but here, just like he remembers it. And there's something fantastic about that big, ugly thing caught in his throat, that thing that's choking him, that won't go back down or come back up, that won't let him say her name because it's here because she's here. And he falls to his knees, eyes springing water like he's one of his tall boys. His tall little boys.

"Dad?" Sam asks, confused, and he wipes his nose with the back of his hand. "Dad, what…where have you…we found Mom."

The kid can't complete a sentence, and Mary's smiling at him like she smiled at him in the hospital, like she's peering down at him as he suckles on her breast, this tiny thing that is so beautiful and new and needs her so much.

Dean's scowling at Missouri.

Missouri, this is her house. Missouri would know things. But John can't bring himself to say her name, either.

"Has he been here the _whole_ time?" Dean demands, rude as an ill-tempered senior citizen, and Mary looks at him in surprise before looking to John again, to say something, anything, either to her or to Dean, but Missouri has this.

"You watch your tone in my house, Dean Winchester." The scolding is sharp, would cut a less-hardened young man to the quick. Especially when predicating what comes next: "In front of your dear mother, too. Disgraceful. What must she think of you?"

Dean squeezes Mary's hand possessively. John watches as Mary squeezes back, the act no less a show of territory, but with the addition of some of that stern stuff John remembers her throwing around back in the day, when John was the soft one and Mary was doling out the chastisements followed up by a slice of pie.

She leans into their eldest, speaks quietly enough that John can't hear, but Sam can. The kid is smirking, looking for all the world like he's enjoying his status of little brother. Dean's face is falling with every word, fast-becoming a puddle of contrition, and John hears the whisper of, "M'sorry, Mom."

"To Missouri, please," Mary says, and it's a scuff of a boot against the floor followed by a mumbled drawl of, "Sorry, Missouri."

And that's when John suddenly exists again, his knees still against the floor, his mouth still agape but now his lips are occupied because his wife is in front of him, kissing him softly, bringing him back to the reality of the situation. She's here. She's really here.

"John," she says.

"Mary," he croaks. And their heads fall onto each other's shoulders as they embrace.

It's not long. It's in fact painfully short, and their boys are watching and so is Missouri, but Mary never was one to dawdle. Mary, John remembers not for the first time, is a hunter. Mary gets it done.

"We have to do something about Sammy's situation," she breathes in his ear. "And Dean needs some pie."


	3. Chapter 3

A/N: Thanks for the review, good-hearted anon. And the follows, and favorites. :)

* * *

It looks violent, that smear of red running from Dean's bottom lip to the tip of his chin, like her baby's a monster, and he was at one point. Her little monster, running to and fro with hands caked in peanut butter and sometimes jelly,saying _lookMommyitssticky _in the high-pitched voice of a toddler because that's what he was then, but isn't now. He's twenty-six now, not much younger than she was when she burned and she still hopes he didn't see, and she sure as hell hopes that he didn't smell.

"Dean, wipe your mouth." John's order is gruff, and Dean looks up with eyes soft and scarred, but still pliable, and too apologetic for the infraction.

That's when Mary realizes she's been fixated on it, the dash of cherry pie on her son's face, and that maybe, just maybe, her husband sees what she sees only because she's seeing it. Blood. You're not supposed to come back from the dead and see blood, that's one of those no-no's you learn even outside of horror movies.

"He's fine, John," she says, because he is, and she puts a hand on Dean's head as he wipes his mouth with a diner napkin, strokes the short hair with fingers fighting to stay steady. He shivers, green eyes now wide and startled, then calm and full of the same love and awe she saw there when he was three and wandered off and couldn't find her, only for her to find him. _Mommy, Mommy, Mommy_ he doesn't say now. But she has the distinct impression that he wants to, and Sam's looking on with envy so thick its taking air from the room.

The booth is too small for three. What they were thinking coming to a public place so soon after, she doesn't know. Or she does, because it was her idea, for Dean to have pie. He gets scolded, he gets pie. It's how her parenting plays out. And Missouri didn't have any pie.

"You okay, Sammy?" she asks Sam, and both John and Dean throw cautious glances towards the youngest at the table, but Sam only stares at her with eyes that well again before nodding slowly. "You sure you don't want any pie?"

"My salad is…good," he says, beaming now through his brimming eyes, and landing an exemplary stab at a piece of romaine lettuce before laying his fork back to rest at the side of his uneaten plate. And resumes his staring.

John's staring at her, too, caught somewhere between pensive and frustrated. She wants to tell him that she knows, but she's not quite sure she does. They're big now. Big boys. Big men. They're caught in that age, that place between, and she hasn't been here to mother them, to tell them how loved they are, how ached for. She hasn't been here to protect them.

But she's here now. She doesn't know how or why, and the ketchup is starting to look coagulated, but she's here now.


End file.
